Casio-Scene shuts down

[DJ Omnimaga]

In April, United-TI was shutting down and its content was integrated into the Cemetech website as a read-only archive to ensure that nothing is lost. On the Casio side of things, it became clear that CasioKingdom, abandoned by its new admins since 2009, would eventually disappear as well, as the site got invaded with spam and everything broke to the point where no more file were available and logging in was no longer possible. As an attempt to preserve that long-running community with plenty of history, the CasioKingdom salvage project was started. Helder7 eventually opened Casio-Scene, which included most CasioKingdom downloads that could be saved in time and eventually forum posts from 2003 to 2009.

The site became quite active by Casio-only site standards, when suddenly, two weeks ago, it became inaccessible. In addition to that, on Planète-Casio, the affiliate link was removed, indicating that this might not be a site downtime, but a possible shut down. Today, a Cemetech post announced that the site had to be shut down due to a legal dispute with the formerly departed CasioKingdom admin (who had stopped maintaining and updating the PHPNuke website in 2009, immediately after purchasing it from Sean Tan, the founder).

It is unknown about what will happen to the files and posts, as the CasioKingdom version of them were originally abandoned, so that stuff might very well be gone forever now. As said in the Cemetech thread, however, you can still contact Helder7 if you need specific files released on Casio-Scene.

[Juju]

That's sad

[Lionel Debroux]

Indeed, the behaviour of the Casio-Kingdom trouble-maker(s) is sad, silly and disrespectful, to say the least. It definitely deserves strong criticism.

People in their right mind should be grateful that others pick up their slack, salvage their work and even build on it... It's not fair for them to attack later. But maybe they have too much ego, too little consideration for the community's sake, or something like that, to behave reasonably and constructively ? Anyhow, that's not the way to improve their reputation, usefulness and number of visits...

[totoyo]

I have indeed retired the affiliate link on Planet-Casio, but Helder7 have always my support.
I find this behavior sad and Casio-Scene was hope of a new dynamic community.

We try to recover the casio-scene wiki and some important program.

[critor]

Helder7 has my support too.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Well, to be honest it's kinda a gray area when creating a new site involves taking content from another, and in this case, it is not your very own content like in TI-Planet case (where practically every 2008-11 news and archive uploads are from Critor/Levak/Adriweb), but IMHO that stuff was part of the community history, and the original admin was just letting it die. In fact I wonder if the domain name was even renewed at all when Casio-Scene started. Hadn't Casio-Scene started, maybe today CasioKingdom domain name would redirect to a farm site.

Also the CK salvage idea was originally a community project. A bunch of people wanted the files and ability to post back. You could see it by seeing many old members coming back.

[critor]

Did you notice the new agressive and useless CasioKingdom homepage message ?
http://casiokingdom.org/




Sadly, the admin is trying to turn the Casio community against itself with his last paragraph...
Reminds me of someone else in the TI community.

I don't think that Helder7 has much to fear.



The 1st thing you have to do if you want to take legal actions is to shut up and avoid posting slandering content publicly.

And I don't see why he would have the right to "bring this as***** to justice for stealing your data and passwords".
Seems he's not the most affected person or does not have enough proofs/facts...



I don't see the point in such an agressive message... would be so easy to ask Helder7 for a full backup and go on with his site...

[Juju]

Okay, now he's just being a stupid jerk that don't even understand why his site would be cloned in the first place.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Yeah actually the files in the archives aren't even his files, same for the forum posts (Did he even post one message on CK before? Last thing I recall: He bought the site from Sean Tan, then vanished, making money from Adsense). Granted, maybe now he owns Sean Tan's posts since he was the original founder, but that's a gray area. I'm pretty sure that even if legal actions were taken, Helder7 could still get away with it by deleting any site/calc contribution from Matt then re-open Casio-Scene.

When TI-Planet started, all messages, tutorials and files from mic were deleted, while on TI-BANK, the same was done with Critor, Adriweb, Lionel and Levak's. On top of that TI-BANK didn't even want to retain the original 110000-posts database anyway. Most people are glad that someone stepped up to bring them back online for use.

It's not like if, for example, you hacked Omnimaga or Cemetech account to redirect them to Casiotech, Casiomni or whatever, or if you signed up only to mass-invite everyone to your own site. CasioKingdom was DEAD, inoperational and nobody could even download anything, and the admin was not willing to do anything about it.

[helder7]

Hello, thanks for the big support by planet casio members and also by you, critor.

this message in site is very mild compared to the emails that he sent me,...
 I dont want talk more about of this in forums,.. He "take screenshots" of my posts :S (screenshots isnt valid as proof in my country)

I offered to him (my last offer) the CS full backup (i and members spend many hours with the site, projects (at least the site keep open)... For exemple, for the design i spend 3/4 weeks, for the wiki, maybe 3/4 weeks only to dev/organize it with the big help of the ziqumu), + domain, he refused...he only want money

In last months we have +/- 30 good add-ins released, ( in last 2 years only 1or 2 is released by international community), a great syscall documentation by simon for prizm/fx9860 and other releases.

The site is closed foreved, never open again, i dont want problems... Bye Calculators, for now ? With the end of casio-scene many other members cease work in Casio Calculators, like my web-friend and mod simon and others casio fx9860 devs.

Now, holidays... And i started working in other project for other type of devices, not calcs

Wiki is made by me and many planet casio members and will return soon.

[DJ Omnimaga]

(screenshots isnt valid as proof in my country)

Especially considering Photoshop exists, someone could indeed make something up with fake pictures. Although for the above screenshot by critor, we can still see it by ourselves online as even bigger proof, while the guy in question is alone.

And his attitude despite you offering a backup shows that he never actually cared about the calculator community. He only bought the site to make money from it.

I hope you don't stop calc stuff, though, but I noticed some people like Cfxm wants to leave other sites, which isn't very good for the Casio community. Of course there's here, Cemetech or Casiocalc, but Omni/Cemetech isn't the same considering it's mostly oriented towards TI, while some people had troubles on Casiocalc in the past. Now what sucks is that even if you kept Casio-Scene offline, I'm pretty sure the guy who runs CK will never put CK back online either.

I wonder if a petition could actually be signed or something else to convince him to get his act together and stop thinking about only money? But again, I'm sure the guy doesn't even own a calculator and never did. Maybe he owns hundreds of dead sites and all he does is make money from them.

I'm glad the Wiki will return, though. Hopefully it's possible to retreve the files one day. Almost all the Casio community disappeared in 2005 when Earthforge closed, now this.

[critor]

this message in site is very mild compared to the emails that he sent me,...
 I dont want talk more about of this in forums,.. He "take screenshots" of my posts :S (screenshots isnt valid as proof in my country)

I offered to him (my last offer) the CS full backup (i and members spend many hours with the site, projects (at least the site keep open)... For exemple, for the design i spend 3/4 weeks, for the wiki, maybe 3/4 weeks only to dev/organize it with the big help of the ziqumu), + domain, he refused...he only want money

So he only figured out the site was cloned when he noticed he didn't receive the ads money?
Pathetic...



And btw, in a legal action for something so complicated (a site with content which he does not own), he's going to pay much more than what he *might* be able to win, and that could be nothing.

He probably has never dealt with legal actions before and hasn't even seen a lawyer yet.

[DJ Omnimaga]

True, also I wonder if there are many cases where someone won a legal battle over the Internet? Money is involved, but, for such small amount of money, is it even worth it for him to fight? Also, a few years ago, I heard that ticalc.org used their ad revenues from 2007 to 2009 to pay themselves a couple of beers when they met IRL in Seattle. That's with over 200 millions of page hits during that period. If all ticalc.org could afford with ad revenues from such a visited site is a bunch of beer, imagine how much lower it must have been for a Casio site that wasn't even that active to begin with.

EDIT: Critor by the way, one concern I have is if free legal aid is available from his country's government. In Quebec, if you earn under a certain amount of revenues per year (I think it's under $17000), you are eligible for free lawyer services. If such thing exists in his country or state, then all he might have to pay is what he will win, if anything.

EDIT 2: actually it appears much lower. If the guy is in business to make money from parked domain names and sites (could they be called undead sites?), maybe he isn't even eligible if it's similar in his country. Here to be eligible it's http://www.csj.qc.ca/SiteComm/W2007English/Main_En_v3.asp

[Juju]

Guys, don't let that Matt guy destroy the Casio community by only thinking of the person that is himself. If I was you, I won't give up to him, this case is pretty similar to the TI-Bank vs. TI-Planet case, I bet the outcome will be similar.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Yeah true. Technically, Helder should be able to keep Casio-Scene online fine if he wanted to, just without any contribution by the original admin or owner.

Hopefully people don't quit Casio programming because of that. But I guess it's their choice.